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Volucella pellucens Volucella pellucens can look a lot like Volucella inflata. On the latter the white band on the abdomen is usually more yellowish, but this is not a good character for ID (too variable). V. pellucens has black hairs on the dorsum, vs orange hairs for inflata (but on photos often hard to see). Also, inflata has clear bands on the sides of the pronotum, whereas on pellucens the pronotum is usually completely black (such as here), but pellucens with (a hint of) lighter side bands are quite frequent too. The best way to tell them apart (imho) is not visible here, but the white band on pelucens is white all the way through to the sternite (belly) and inflata has a dark margin between tergite and sternite, showing as a black line in the white band on the side of the animal.    Diptera,Hooverfly,Syrphidae,Volucella,Volucella pellucens Click/tap to enlarge PromotedCountry intro

Volucella pellucens

Volucella pellucens can look a lot like Volucella inflata. On the latter the white band on the abdomen is usually more yellowish, but this is not a good character for ID (too variable). V. pellucens has black hairs on the dorsum, vs orange hairs for inflata (but on photos often hard to see). Also, inflata has clear bands on the sides of the pronotum, whereas on pellucens the pronotum is usually completely black (such as here), but pellucens with (a hint of) lighter side bands are quite frequent too. The best way to tell them apart (imho) is not visible here, but the white band on pelucens is white all the way through to the sternite (belly) and inflata has a dark margin between tergite and sternite, showing as a black line in the white band on the side of the animal.

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"Volucella pellucens" is a hoverfly. It occurs in much of Europe, and across Asia to Japan.

Similar species: True Flies
Species identified by Pudding4brains
View Pudding4brains's profile

By Pudding4brains

Public Domain
Uploaded Jul 7, 2018.